Coaches & Leadership
You want to fix it.
That’s what coaches do. They identify problems and they address them. They run the drill. They make the adjustment. They have the conversation. They change the lineup.
But some team problems don’t respond to that approach. Some of them are complex in a way that means the fix-it instinct — applied too quickly or too forcefully — makes things worse rather than better.
Read this passage slowly.
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him; do not fret when people succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.
Psalm 37:7 — NIVLet that sit for a second before you move.
Be still. Wait patiently. That’s a hard instruction for a coach in the middle of a struggling season. The pressure is to act. To do something. To demonstrate that the problem has been identified and the response is underway.
But complex team problems — the cultural ones, the relational ones, the ones that are really about trust or identity or unaddressed history — often require the opposite of immediate action. They require the coach to be present enough to understand what’s actually happening before intervening in ways that disrupt the natural resolution process.
Some things fix themselves if you create the conditions and get out of the way. The conflict that needs a week to breathe before the conversation happens. The slump that needs a change of routine more than another film session. The dynamic that needs space to normalize rather than attention that calcifies it as a problem.
The skill of sitting with a team problem without immediately acting on it is one of the harder things to develop as a coach. It runs against the instinct and against the external pressure to demonstrate you’re addressing it. But the coach who can distinguish between the problems that require immediate intervention and the ones that require patient presence is the coach who handles both kinds better.
Be still. Wait. Observe. Let the room tell you when it’s ready to receive the intervention. That patience is not passivity. It’s wisdom.
The coach who can distinguish between problems requiring immediate intervention and those requiring patient presence handles both kinds better.
Is the problem you’re facing one that needs action or one that needs patient presence? How do you tell the difference?
The diagnostic question is the hardest part. Most coaches default to action. The question invites genuine reflection on whether action is actually what’s needed.
Be still. Wait. Observe. The patience is wisdom, not passivity.
This devotional runs against the dominant coaching culture of action and intervention. Deliver it with the conviction that patience is genuinely the right tool here, not a concession.